Thursday, December 31, 2009

FINAL POST of the year... Just thought I’d close out 2009 with another Hello From Earth and Sent Forever update. As of 7 PM California time tonight (12 PM Sydney time on Friday, January 1), it will be eighteen weeks since a radio signal containing 25,878 goodwill text messages—including one by me—was transmitted to the exoplanet Gliese 581d from a giant NASA antenna in Australia. The signal will be 2 trillion miles (3.2 trillion kilometers) from Earth. Awesome. The Sent Forever signal that was transmitted from the United Kingdom at 8:07 PM (California time) on October 5 is now 1.4 trillion miles (2.2 trillion kilometers) from Earth as of this typing. That is all. Happy New Years Eve, everyone!

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

AOL's Moviefone.com is a joke...Click here to know why. While it's understandable that Megan Fox would be called the Worst Actress (but Sexiest Female Actress) of 2009 and Transformers 2 the Worst Movie (but Best Action Film) of '09, calling Twilight: New Moon the Best Movie of this year is a friggin' joke. The next Twilight flick, Eclipse, was also voted as being more anticipated than Iron Man 2 and even Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 in 2010. What the f...

No doubt a bunch of teenybopper girls who drank the Kool-Aid (right after swallowing something else) voted over and over on that poll...

Thursday, December 24, 2009

IRON MAN 2... Just thought I’d post screenshots from the Iron Man 2 teaser trailer, which was released online a week ago. Hopefully, War Machine is gonna kick major ass (along with Whiplash and Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow. "Bow-chicka-bow-bow!") in next May’s anticipated blockbuster. Don Cheadle is a good actor, but it’s still unfortunate that Terrence Howard got booted out after the first film. Freakin’ Marvel... Anyways, here's the video itself:

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

AVATAR... Last Sunday, I watched James Cameron’s newest film on IMAX 3-D...and not surprisingly, it looked awesome! Cameron did an awesome job portraying an intriguing alien planet and species whose appearance popped right out through the wonders of 3-D. Floating mountains, exotic-looking plants and even an alien language that in real life was completely made up by a linguist who was enlisted from the University of Southern California... Cameron was very thorough in fleshing out the world of Pandora that was locked in his head for the past dozen or so years (as Cameron waited for special effects and camera technology to advance to the point where making Avatar would be possible...and also basking in the glory of making $1 billion at the worldwide box office and winning umpteenth Oscars for Titanic back in 1998).

Of course, some of you are probably wondering why I said that Avatar looked awesome...as opposed to being awesome. That’s because the film—as a couple of folks pointed out online in the months leading up to the movie’s release—had a storyline that wasn’t very original and was indeed derivative from other (Oscar-winning) films. Much as how some people pointed out that Titanic was similar to the 1939 Best Picture winner Gone with the Wind(both films had a love triangle set during a major historical event), Avatar was reminiscent of Dances with Wolves and Braveheart. It was also reminiscent of this year’s earlier well-reviewed sci-fi film District 9...in that the protagonist in that movie, Wikus van de Merwe (unintentionally) sheds his human skin to become just like the alien creatures he reluctantly has to protect in South Africa. In Avatar, Sam Worthington’s character Jake Sully (intentionally and permanently) sheds his human body to become one with the alien natives, the Na’vi, which he’s sworn to protect at the end of the film. If you haven’t seen Avatar yet, then ignore that last sentence (though I'm pretty sure you can guess this by watching the trailers). And yes, I’m 100% sure that the comparison to District 9 was definitely unintentional on Cameron’s part. I myself just found the fate of the main heroes in both flicks to be very similar.

In terms of the music, Avatar had a terrific film score by James Horner. However, I didn’t find the music as memorable as that in Titanic...or Apollo 13. Horner composed the score for those movies as well. Unlike Titanic’s music, which was on a CD album that was the bestselling film score since John Williams’ work on Star Wars in the late 70’s, I doubt Avatar will have any kind of presence on the Billboard music chart anytime soon. Oh well.

Lastly, will I watch Avatar at the movie theaters again? You betcha’! I saw it on a "fake" IMAX screen (which is nearly the same size as a regular movie screen but has an IMAX-quality sound system complementing it in the auditorium, and a digital print that has the same visual quality as an actual IMAX 70mm film reel) at an AMC theater on opening weekend, so I can assure you that I will be driving 20-30 miles to a "real" IMAX theater (specifically the one at the Irvine Spectrum’s Edwards 21 in Orange County) to watch James Cameron’s visionary work on the big screen again. Later.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

REST IN PEACEBrittany Murphy(1977-2009). The only films I saw with her in it were Sin City and 8 Mile(and I've also watched several episodes of the now-defunct FOX TV show, King of the Hill...where she did the voice of trailer park daughter Luanne Platter)...but that obviously doesn't mean I can't pay my respect here. So um...rest in peace, Ms. Murphy (technically, it's Mrs. Monjack, but whatever). That is all.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

LAST WEEK, I attended the L.A. Auto Show at the Los Angeles Convention Center...my fourth time since 2000, I believe, that I went to the annual car expo. Lots of cool rides were on display as usual, but the companies noticeably absent at the convention center were Ferrari, Lamborghini and Nissan. I heard that they didn’t feel like spending cash on transporting their cars to Los Angeles this year...cheap bastards (ironically). Anyways, here are some photos that I took at the auto show.

I’ll eventually create a new page on my main website devoted to this year’s convention. Eventually.

Friday, December 11, 2009

IRON MAN 2... I’m totally looking forward to next May, when the sequel to 2008’s critically-acclaimed summer blockbuster comes out in theaters. Hopefully, the teaser trailer for Iron Man 2 will be released soon...presumably in front of James Cameron's Avatar on December 18 or most likely Sherlock Holmes(with Robert Downey Jr. playing the famous fictional detective) on Christmas Day. I’m looking forward to those films as well...especially Avatar.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

TEN GAMES in a row... I just realized that the Lakers began and ended this decade winning a championship (with Shaq and Kobe in 2000, and then Pau and Kobe in 2009), and they’re currently in great position to start the new decade with another NBA title. A loss is inevitable, but here’s hoping Los Angeles continues this winning streak they’re on (the blow-out victory against the Utah Jazz tonight was their 10th in a row)...at least till the All-Star break in February, that is. Um, too optimistic?

Monday, December 07, 2009

SPACESHIPTWO Revealed... The new spacecraft, dubbed Virgin Space Ship (VSS)Enterprise, made its official debut at its manufacturing facility in California’s Mojave Desert tonight. So who here has $200,000 to spend on a supersonic flight to the edge of space? (I wish I did... Duh.) This excludes the price of the plane ticket to New Mexico...where SpaceShipTwo and its sister vehicles will be based (at Spaceport America). Sir Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic owns the spacecraft.

Friday, December 04, 2009

VIDEO OF THE DAY... Here’s a clip showing how the sky would look from different cities on the Earth if the planet had a ring like Saturn. Pretty cool... Too bad the animator didn’t show how the rings would look from a vantage point here in Los Angeles. Oh well. Interesting use of that song Ave Maria, by the way.